Designer of Truman Show town will lead AECC workshop on Bridge of Don plans
By Joanna Skailes
Published: 11/03/2010
The designer of a Florida town featured in the 1998 film The Truman Show will be in Aberdeen next week to lead discussions on plans for a new community on the Granite City’s northern outskirts.
Planner Andres Duany will head an eight-day design workshop for a proposed 7,000-homes community at Grandhome and Whitestripes in the city’s Bridge of Don.
Potential buyers, residents and other interested parties will be involved in the workshop at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. The Grandhome proposal is being considered as part of the city’s local development plan.
The design exercise, called a charrette and part of the Scottish Sustainable Communities Initiative, aims to encourage active involvement from the local community.
It will be the first time in the north-east that the voice of the local population will have such strong input into the future of a major housing development.
Mr Duany designed and planned Seaside, which was the setting for The Truman Show, a parody of the American dream. Mr Duany also helped found the Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993, an anti-sprawl movement dedicated to reviving cities and building sustainable communities.
Mr Duany, who will arrive in the Granite City next Tuesday, said: “I am looking forward to my visit to Aberdeen.
“Scotland has an excellent reputation for town planning – you have to poke around only a bit to find a masterful old place. Of course, recently there have been some terrible influences – American-style suburban sprawl among them – not to speak of the obsession with untested invention which undermined the new towns, and that has not yet tailed off.
“Being a blank canvas, Grandhome could go either way, or it can become the model project that the Scottish Sustainable Communities Initiative is now fostering. Some of the better young Scottish architects and planners will be involved, so we will probably get it right.”
The charrette will feature major public lectures and smaller gatherings for specialists to discuss infrastructure and environmental issues around the site.
Presentations will be held next week on Tuesday and Saturday in King’s College Conference Centre at 7pm and 11am respectively and on Tuesday, March 23, in the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre.
Anyone wishing to attend a session should contact Jas Atwal on mail@jasatwal.com or 07961104171.
Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1641493?UserKey=#ixzz0hvXtubC6
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